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The Neural Advantage of Speaking 2 Languages

scientificamerican.com

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Re: The Neural Advantage of Speaking 2 Languages

#21

Post by kowen »

yannis wrote: post #11

My son is fully bilingual in Afrikaans(sort of a Dutch Dialect) and English. When he was a toddler he would speak fluently to his grandmother in Afrikaans and would turn in the same conversation and seamlessly talk to me or his mother in English. He kept this ability right into about the middle years in Elementary School. After that this ability somehow diminished and he would throw English words into an Afrikaans co…

Interesting!

Three of my siblings are bi-lingual Russian/English. At first they mixed things up terribly, but after their Russian grandmother spent a year with them they were suddenly able to completely separate the two. Grandma doesn't speak a word of English, whereas both parents speak both languages, so we speculated that what they were doing was 'the easiest thing that works'.

When I speak in Norwegian I toss in English words all the time (because I can get away with it - all Norwegians seem to speak English). In French I don't leak English into it. In English, I rarely (if ever) slip Norwegian or French into it.

Where I really get into trouble is when I'm in a conversation with Norwegians, French, and English-speakers at the same time, because I end up trying to translate Norwegian to French, French to English, etc, and end up speaking the wrong language to pretty much everyone involved.

Re: The Neural Advantage of Speaking 2 Languages

#22

Post by timwiseman »

nfnaaron wrote: post #10
ique wrote: post #3

Very interesting article. Can't help but to think about the differences in countries educational systems. I'm Swedish, here we start studying English in second (numbers and such) and third grade (start with words and grammar). And then study it all the way up and through high-school. Pretty much every Swede of a younger generation is fluent in English. Almost all people also spend several years in grades 6-9 studying…

It's not much of a perceived advantage to study a 2nd language as an American, because no matter where you go there's probably someone who speaks English, and chances are that wherever you go few if any speak the 2nd language that you studied as a kid. There's small payoff for an American to study a 2nd language. There's large payoff for people from non-English speaking countries to study English; it must be true or…

I think learning a second language in school has enough ancillary benefits to make it mandatory, but there is no language other than English that is so widespread to make that particular langauage dominant. I think that within the limits of the resources, schools should try to offer a few choices and let the students choose.

Sometimes a language will appeal to a student because something they are interested in is heavily tied to that language. A serious student of judo would likely benefit from speaking Japanesse if only to be able to talk with other practitioners. A serious student of Go may be interested a language from a country where that is common such as Japanese or Korean, etc. On the other hand, someone interested in philosophy is likely to benefit from French more than most other languages.

If we absolutely had to pick one, I would focus on Mandarin Chinese. China is a rapidly rising power that is becoming ever more important in the international scene and houses a huge percentage of the world population.

Re: The Neural Advantage of Speaking 2 Languages

#23

Post by nfnaaron »

wallflower wrote: post #15
nfnaaron wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not much of a perceived advantage to study a 2nd language as an American, because no matter where you go there's probably someone who speaks English, and chances are that wherever you go few if any speak the 2nd language that you studied as a kid. There's small payoff for an American to study a 2nd language. There's large payoff for people from non-English speaking countries to study English; it must be true or…

> There's small payoff for an American to study a 2nd language. If you are only looking at economic payoff. I've been to countries/cultures (Latin America) where I feel that if you don't have a grasp of the language - you can only be a tourist. Reusing cliches but not being able to speak a language - you lack the passport to truly immerse yourself - you'll only be a tourist if you can't speak (to a point) the languag…

I don't have an app, but here's a book that I've been liking:

Easy Spanish Reader: http://www.amazon.com/Easy-Spanish-Reader-William-Tardy/dp/0...

same, with CD: http://www.amazon.com/Easy-Spanish-Reader-CD-ROM-Three-Part/...

It's for beginners. You just read, simple stories. Some words are defined in the margins, some in the glossary, and some you just get from context. I like it a lot.

Re: The Neural Advantage of Speaking 2 Languages

#24

Post by kowen »

lmkg wrote: post #18
kowen wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I studied German for 4 years in school, and am far from fluent. I can painfully pick out details in a newspaper article, and can usually figure out if people are talking about soccer or food or whatever. On the other hand, I'm fluent in French, and learned that in France, not in school. In my experience, school wasn't a very efficient medium for learning languages.

The best (possibly only) way to learn a language on a functional level, is to use it. In my second-year Spanish class in high school, our teacher let us chat during class, so long as we chatted in Spanish and not English. In practice, we talked Spanglish, but nonetheless, that experience made me far better at Spanish than all my other studying before and after. She also taught all of her lessons entirely in Spanish,…

I've heard great things about language immersion.

There is an American actress - can't remember her name - she speaks fluent French. I saw her in a French movie and spent half the movie trying to place her face. It turns out that she went to a bilingual school French/English.

Re: The Neural Advantage of Speaking 2 Languages

#25

Post by TheSOB88 »

ibsulon wrote: post #19
TheSOB88 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're like most Americans, you never really had it. Were you fluent? I've "studied" it in school for 6 years (MS, HS, Univ), and I'm not even close to fluent. I don't think the school system is equipped to do that.

My grammar was advanced, my vocabulary intermediate. I could mostly understand Telemundo and could hold a conversation, but was nowhere near fluent. Now, I'm not much better off than a first year.

Qué lástima.

Re: The Neural Advantage of Speaking 2 Languages

#26

Post by joubert »

yannis wrote: post #11

My son is fully bilingual in Afrikaans(sort of a Dutch Dialect) and English. When he was a toddler he would speak fluently to his grandmother in Afrikaans and would turn in the same conversation and seamlessly talk to me or his mother in English. He kept this ability right into about the middle years in Elementary School. After that this ability somehow diminished and he would throw English words into an Afrikaans co…

Afrikaans is not a "sort of a Dutch dialect".

It is a separate language, derived from Dutch (note, there are difference Afrikaans dialects). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrikaans

Interesting write-up of what is considered a "dialect", and how it differs from "language": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect

Re: The Neural Advantage of Speaking 2 Languages

#28

Post by theycallmemorty »

nfnaaron wrote: post #10
ique wrote: post #3

Very interesting article. Can't help but to think about the differences in countries educational systems. I'm Swedish, here we start studying English in second (numbers and such) and third grade (start with words and grammar). And then study it all the way up and through high-school. Pretty much every Swede of a younger generation is fluent in English. Almost all people also spend several years in grades 6-9 studying…

It's not much of a perceived advantage to study a 2nd language as an American, because no matter where you go there's probably someone who speaks English, and chances are that wherever you go few if any speak the 2nd language that you studied as a kid. There's small payoff for an American to study a 2nd language. There's large payoff for people from non-English speaking countries to study English; it must be true or…

Mono-lingual Canadian here with a question for both of you:

What do adolescents in your countries think of learning english?

Most anglophone Canadians start learning french in grade 4, unless their parents put them in an immersion program at a younger age. In Ontario we were required to take French until grade 9 and after that the VAST majority of us stopped because we hated it.

Is it like that with English in other parts of the world? Or is English enough of a prestige language (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prestige_%28sociolinguistics%29) that young people enjoy learning it?

Re: The Neural Advantage of Speaking 2 Languages

#29

Post by warfangle »

nfnaaron wrote: post #10
ique wrote: post #3

Very interesting article. Can't help but to think about the differences in countries educational systems. I'm Swedish, here we start studying English in second (numbers and such) and third grade (start with words and grammar). And then study it all the way up and through high-school. Pretty much every Swede of a younger generation is fluent in English. Almost all people also spend several years in grades 6-9 studying…

It's not much of a perceived advantage to study a 2nd language as an American, because no matter where you go there's probably someone who speaks English, and chances are that wherever you go few if any speak the 2nd language that you studied as a kid. There's small payoff for an American to study a 2nd language. There's large payoff for people from non-English speaking countries to study English; it must be true or…

I'm betting this is going to flip around in the next eighty years or so, and not towards Spanish.

If China's economy doesn't crash and burn (and, if it does, if it does not fail to rise again from the ashes like ours did after the Great Depression), Chinese is likely to become an important trade language. It's a difficult language, but then again - for different reasons - so is English.

I'm placing my bets that within a century, there will be two primary trade languages (Chinese, probably Mandarin but also likely Cantonese), and English. And perhaps, a century or so after that, simply a pidgin of the two.

The way global communications is bringing people closer cognitively will effectively starve out other languages. People will still speak them - likely limited to their local social groups (family, friends, et cetera), but fall to a global trade language (pidgin of English+Chinese) for nearly every other encounter.

In some ways, this may be extremely interesting from a linguistics standpoint: Everyone will speak a common language, but there will be more and more language-isolates, as individual social circles become more insulated from each other by the global trade language.

Re: The Neural Advantage of Speaking 2 Languages

#30

Post by ique »

theycallmemorty wrote: post #28
nfnaaron wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not much of a perceived advantage to study a 2nd language as an American, because no matter where you go there's probably someone who speaks English, and chances are that wherever you go few if any speak the 2nd language that you studied as a kid. There's small payoff for an American to study a 2nd language. There's large payoff for people from non-English speaking countries to study English; it must be true or…

Mono-lingual Canadian here with a question for both of you: What do adolescents in your countries think of learning english? Most anglophone Canadians start learning french in grade 4, unless their parents put them in an immersion program at a younger age. In Ontario we were required to take French until grade 9 and after that the VAST majority of us stopped because we hated it. Is it like that with English in other…

In Sweden I wouldn't say that kids enjoy learning it, but everyone sees it as absolutely necessary. It's also used every day because all music, all TV-shows (except some really bad Swedish shows) and all movies are in English.

Since we start so early and never stop until we're 18, everyone just kind of accepts it as something part of life and by the time you're 18 you're perfectly fluent.

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